Colourless, green, yellow or black?

Can you guess what I'm doing at the moment?  I am about to start my final week on a respiratory outpatients SSU.  I had been thinking that maybe respiratory could be the speciality for me and whilst I have enjoyed these two weeks, but now I've done a little - nope.  Another speciality choice crossed off the list.  It has been the most depressing couple of weeks.  It is probably not the most depressing - oncology, palliative, I can see those as being sad; I would go into them prepared.  This was an ambush of sad.

First patient of the day comes into the room, consultant looks at the scans.  We are sat behind the consultant staring in awe at the proceedings, not quite believing we are in an actual hospital seeing actual patients and trying really hard to look like we've done this loads of times before and sort of know what we're doing.  The consultant has quite a thick accent so I find I have to concentrate a lot on what he's saying to understand it.  What gives the game away though is the look of utter shock on the patient's and their relatives face.  The look someone gets when their whole world falls apart.  That the shortness of breath their loved one has been feeling and the slight cough is actually ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis and there's nothing that can be done.  That they have about 2-3 years left of increasing shortness of breath and decreasing quality of life as the fibrosis rips through their lungs, spreading like cancer.  Repeat this for two clinics a day for two weeks with one and a half days of to work at the GP's and that's my last two weeks.

The consultant was explaining to a patient that they could be put on this experimental anti-fibrotic drug.  It isn't licensed yet and the drug company will give it to the hospital for free to so that if it does end up being licensed the hospital will be more willing to pay for it because they have patients on it already.  The drug may not work, but you might think it's better than doing nothing.  The patient looked at me and asked what I thought they should do.  I had no words.  As they left, the patient thanked me for my time, patted me on the shoulder and told me to enjoy my life.  I know that death is a big part of being a Doctor.  I'm not naive enough to think that everyone can be saved.  I just wasn't expecting to meet it so soon.

A patient was seen with a whole list of problems, but they are happy, up beat, they have a strong family network, they still do things, but they'll be dead in 6 months.  It's incomprehensible   It just makes me want that parallel life with me curled up with mr on a big comfy sofa in front of a roaring wood fire with a couple of dogs and cats lying about the place.  I want my life now, I don't want to keep waiting for it.  It doesn't help I'm currently trying to write an essay on work life balance (as in my lack of one and the changes I plan to make to get one), and that January is creeping ever closer.  In January mr starts the longest period of time we've ever been apart.  He goes from being far away, but not too far that I can't go visiting some weekends, to ridiculously far away.  He's not going anywhere scary, but he is going far away for roughly 98 sleeps.  We don't have the exact dates yet.  Thank goodness for whoever invented Skype.

It might be a little hard to believe from the way I'm moping, but between writing this post and the last I did cheer up considerably.  I had one of those special moments girls get when they go clothes shopping and realise they've dropped a dress size.  Fantastic feeling.  I also finished all my Christmas shopping, I just have to put a few more coats of varnish on things I have been making for family presents, finish writing the cards and I am done.  Tomorrow is home visits and the cancer clinic.  Psyching myself up for it with hot chocolate and biscuits.